A personal cartography
The Center of Your World
Everywhere you have lived pulls on you a little. Add the places, say how long you stayed, and this will find the single point on Earth they all balance around — and how far that point has drifted from where you began.
Places lived
Add them in order, starting with where you were born or grew up.
About This Tool
Everyone has a centre of gravity, geographically speaking. It is the point where all the places you have lived would balance if the planet were a mobile hanging from a string — and for most people it is somewhere they have never been.
The calculation is done properly, on a sphere. Each place becomes a point in three dimensions, those points are averaged, and the result is pushed back out to the surface of the Earth. That matters, because simply averaging latitudes and longitudes falls apart the moment your life crosses the Pacific.
How To Use It
- Add the places you have lived, starting with the earliest. Type a few letters and pick from the list.
- Optionally give each one the number of years you spent there. Time is weight, and it changes the answer a lot.
- Find your centre. It appears on the map in gold, with your homes marked in red and your first in dark ink.
- Look at the drift figure. That is the distance between where you started and where your life now balances.
Why This Exists
Because we describe our lives in stories and dates, almost never in coordinates. Ask someone where they are from and you get a name; ask where the middle of their life is and there is no answer, because nobody has ever computed it.
The result is often strange in a useful way. People who moved once find their centre stranded between two homes, belonging to neither. People who moved constantly find it sitting in an ocean. And people who never left find it exactly where they have always been, which is its own kind of answer.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is my personal centre calculated?
Each place is converted into a point in three dimensions on a sphere, those points are averaged together, and the result is projected back onto the surface of the Earth. This is the proper way to find a centre on a globe, and unlike simply averaging latitude and longitude it still works for places on opposite sides of the world.
Why can I add years to each place?
Because time spent somewhere is what makes it matter. If you add years, each place pulls on the centre in proportion to how long you lived there, so a childhood home of eighteen years outweighs a single year abroad. Leave the years blank and every place counts equally.
Why is my centre in the middle of the ocean?
Because a centre of gravity does not have to fall on land. If you have lived on separate continents, the balance point between them will often sit in open water, which is a genuine result rather than an error. It is simply the point that all of your places balance around.
What is the drift figure?
Drift is the great-circle distance from the first place you list, which is usually where you began, to your calculated centre. It is a single number for how far your life has pulled away from its starting point.
Which places can I choose from?
The tool includes over a thousand cities worldwide from the public-domain Natural Earth dataset, with capitals and major cities ranked first when you search. Smaller towns are not included, so pick the nearest listed city and the centre will barely move.
Is anything stored or uploaded?
No. Everything is calculated in your browser. The places you enter are never uploaded or stored anywhere, and they disappear the moment you close the tab.
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